Only Time
by tulzdavampslayer
Summary: "It seems," Arthur points out to the blushing girl in his arms, "that the world is conspiring to get me to kiss you this week."
1. Only a Week

Only Time

Chapter 1 - Only a Week

An Ariadne/Arthur romance written by Tulzdavampslayer

Disclaimer: Inception belongs to Christopher Nolan. I am only borrowing it. I can't promise when I'll return it though...

* * *

It has only been a week. A week to get her head together as much as she ever will be able to. The past few months seem like a dream, and she fingers her totem once again. It still falls the way she designed it to. She still doesn't trust it. Nothing feels the same as it did before.

A week is hardly enough time for anything, but it's certainly not enough time to start to miss someone you hardly knew to begin with. Working and dreaming in such close quarters with Cobb, Arthur, Eames, and yes even Yusuf, had created a bond she had not expected. She lies in the dark, staring at the ceiling of her childhood home, and she misses them all.

She has spent the week visiting her parents, killing time before the dreaded return to Paris. How could she ever go back to being a student after becoming as powerful as God? But she has her ticket booked anyway and her bags packed just in case and she lies in her bed, her one week up, waiting for the ball to drop. She knows that, if the only other option is offered, she would leave behind her life and disappear into the world of dreams and extraction and marvels and creation without a second's thought. But she's running out of time.

When her mother knocks softly on her door, Ariadne knows it's time and her heart skips a beat.

He's here.

Here to give her a different choice.


	2. Only the Two of Them

Only Time

Chapter 2 - Only the Two of Them

An Ariadne/Arthur romance written by Tulzdavampslayer

Disclaimer: Christopher Nolan owns Inception. Unless you go with my brother's theory: that Leonardo DiCaprio actually practiced Inception _on_ Christopher Nolan, planting the idea of the film in his head. ...but probably not.

* * *

Ariadne has to stop herself from sliding down the bannister, grabbing his hand and dragging him to the car.

She takes a deep breath and walks calmly down the stairs, pausing outside the living room just long enough to hear her heart return to a more natural pace.

And there he is, sitting on that horrible sofa with the floral pattern that she has never been ashamed of until now, a mug of tea in one hand and the other fingering a small red die. He looks so terribly out of place. Every strand of hair in place, his suit impeccable and everything about him screaming perfection. Or OCD, if you listened to Eames; something Ariadne has tried not to do too often.

Arthur.

"Hello," Ariadne says, unsure what story he has told to gain entry to the house or who he even introduced himself as. A friend? A fellow student? A stranger with a mysterious business proposal? In a way, she knows he's a little of each. She smiles and he smiles and her parents don't understand. They are left alone.

Finally he speaks.

"How are you?" He asks.

She laughs. It's such an abominably casual question. It didn't suit him.

"I'm fine. How are _you_?" She knows he can tell how ridiculous this feels to her. They don't need small talk or banal conversation. They could easily just walk out right now, drive off to some abandoned warehouse and start working, barely a word spoken. Such a strange bond born out of nowhere. Born out of dreams.

But it seems there are some words that need to be spoken.

"What do you plan to do?" He asks, and she tells him the plans laid out. Paris, study, graduation, a low ranking position at some firm, working her way up, marriage, kids, designing a real life every day kind of beauty, forgetting what it was like to truly create. She doesn't say what she wants to do. Run away from her life and dream, no matter the consequences. Explore and experiment and really truly _live_.

They sit in awkward silence for a while until Ariadne asks what Arthur will do now that Cobb has retired.

"Temporarily," he says as if there could be no doubt in the matter. As if Cobb will suddenly give up the children he has worked so hard to return to.

"I have a few possibilities lined up. Simple extractions, single layered dreams and quick in and out jobs for a little while. It's... not healthy to always be going so deep," Arthur says, almost smirking. "But I have one small problem with my plans. Working alone... It doesn't suit me. I need a partner. Someone with imagination, drive and talent."

Ariadne's heart skips a beat and she almost forgets to breathe. He isn't asking the question she needs so badly to be asked. He just sits there and watches her as she tries not to burst out of her own skin.

"Have anyone in mind?" She manages to ask. "Why not Eames? He's always been quite imaginative. I'm sure you two would get along like a house on fire."

He scowls at her tease. "Yes, I'm sure. Things would be destroyed and people would die."

"Well what were you thinking, then?" She won't beg. She won't plead. She might if he doesn't offer it soon.

"I was thinking that as much as I'm sure Paris and study and real life would be the smart choice... Hell!" He laughs. "It's probably the safe choice. But I was thinking that maybe you'd like another choice."

There is no way to control the grin that plasters itself across Ariadne's face.

Arthur puts down the mug with the chipped lip and garish colours.

"Care for a drive, partner?"


	3. Only Five Minutes

Only Time

Chapter 3 - Only Five Minutes

An Ariadne/Arthur romance written by Tulzdavampslayer

Disclaimer - Inception is a creation of Christopher Nolan. I merely borrow the characters and the concept.

A/N - sorry, but the chapters aren't going to be uploaded as often as I'd like. Hopefully I'll get a chapter finished every couple of days, but between work, uni, and trying to rewrite one of my novels from scratch it gets a bit difficult to finish off something I actually feel comfortable with. But I'll do my best! (maybe one of these days I'll even finish one of my other stories, Love or Lose has been sitting there for something like five years waiting for me to finish it... awkward...)

* * *

Ariadne should have known better.

What had promised to be a short drive to have a conversation best not overheard by 'civilians' as Arthur called them has already lasted three hours. She doesn't mind. They talk about nothing as he drives, and she enjoys it. For a little while they are just two normal everyday people going for a drive. There are no dreams, no Extractions or Inceptions. Just the two of them.

Ariadne does feel a small twinge of guilt however that she had told her father they would be gone for only a few minutes; half an hour at the most. She has a flight back to Paris tomorrow afternoon, but Ariadne is starting to doubt whether she will be on that flight. Hopefully neither of her parents are waiting for her to come home, ringing the phone she had forgotten to take with her, calling the police afraid that the mysterious young man had kidnapped their daughter...

She borrows Arthur's phone and makes a quick call. Nobody answers, and Ariadne hopes that it's because everyone's asleep and not starting a search party. She leaves a quick if vague message.

It's just after midnight when they reach their destination: an old brick office building with four or five floors.

"These are my headquarters," Arthur announces as he opens the door for her. "Temporarily."

Temporarily, Ariadne muses as she follows him inside. He has used that word several times over the past few hours. It's almost as if he can't make a definite decision. She considers asking what it is about permanence that he's so afraid of. Instead she asks if he is using the whole building.

"I own it," he answers, surprising her.

"But if it's only temporary..." she stammers. How is she ever supposed to understand Arthur? He promises a five minute drive that becomes hours, he owns whole buildings that he barely uses... He appears in her house late at night and whisks her off to who knows where... and she lets him.

As they walk up the stairs, Arthur explains that he and Cobb both own buildings like this and their old warehouse in several different parts of the world.

"This office building acts as a safe house as well as a useful storage facility, but when you work with dreams, a single permanent address stops seeming so practical." Arthur enters a ridiculously long code into an electronic lock and leads her into a comfortable looking apartment.

The apartment is set up as an office, but there are several comfortable lounges gathered together in one room. Ariadne wonders how many dreams have been shared in that room, and who shared them. The furnishings are simple but with a touch of class and she knows without a doubt that Arthur has spent a lot of time here.

"Are the other apartments like this one?" she asks, wanting to explore the building, get a feeling for it, know it inside out and upside down.

"Each serves a purpose," Arthur answers as he goes to the mini-fridge hidden next to a desk and retrieves two bottles of water. "A couple are set up now as living quarters, but we have one office on the ground floor for meetings. The others are set up for different things. Cobb and Mal used to use one solely for designing dreamscapes."

Ariadne tries not to flinch at Mal's name. Limbo was still too recent. She had shot a person. All the excuses that Mal was already dead, that it was in self-defense, that it was just a dream, none of them made her feel any better about it. She hadn't told Arthur all of what had happened, and she doubted Cobb had either. She wants to tell him.

She realises that she wants to tell Arthur everything. Not just about Limbo or Cobb's dreams, but about her parents and studies, about her childhood, her greatest fears and deepest desires. Her nightmares. The realisation shocks her. The bond that has formed between them runs deeper than she had thought, and she doesn't know what it means.

Instead of spilling her guts and most likely scaring Arthur off, Ariadne attempts a more professional approach.

"So what types of jobs are we talking about?"

"None straight away," Arthur tells her. "We shouldn't be diving back into it too quickly. This last mission... you went a lot deeper than anticipated. Even spending a short time in Limbo can mess with your mind, you know. Look what happened to Mal."

Ariadne bites her tongue, trying her hardest not to tell Arthur what had really happened to Mal, that theirs was not the first successful Inception. She would tell him. But not tonight.

"Anyway," Arthur snaps Ariadne out of her thoughts. "We'll have plenty of work to do without officially being on a job."

"I need training," Ariadne guesses.

He nods. "You're the best Architect I've ever seen, and you adapted to this very fast. But how do you think you'll go with becoming an Extractor as well?"

She grins. A new challenge.

"That's what I thought," Arthur says. "In a perfect world, Cobb could train you in Extraction. He's the best. But you're going to have to put up with me instead."

"I think I can handle that," she says. "When do we start?"

Arthur laughs. Ariadne has never heard him laugh. It startles her a little.

"I should get you home first, before your family call the police. Didn't you promise your father you'd only be gone a few minutes?"

She grimaces at the reminder before following him back to the car.

"Will you be alright to drive?"

Arthur raises a eyebrow at her, incredulousness plastered over his face. She quickly backpedals. "I just mean... It took us hours to get here, and it'll take just as long to get back... It's the middle of the night..."

Arthur places his hands on her shoulders. "Ariadne. You've known me a while now. You've seen what I've been trained to do. You honestly don't think I can drive for a few hours?"

She laughs, a little uncertain. "Sorry."

"Not a 'sorry' thing. It's a whole new world."

They stand there for a few long seconds, one of his thumbs almost absentmindedly brushing against her collarbone, before he very suddenly pulls away and opens the car door for her. Ariadne smiles. Arthur, ever the gentleman. Did he even feel the intense pull between them that she had just felt? As if there were a thread connecting them, pulled tight around them, linking them... and then he had pulled away, not quite snapping the thread.

Is it all in her head?

Ariadne sits in silence for most of the first hour of the drive, trying to figure out what has happened tonight.


	4. Only a Year

Only Time

Chapter 4 - Only a Year

An Ariadne/Arthur romance written by Tulzdavampslayer

Disclaimer - If I owned Inception, I would probably not be publishing fanfiction. Although that would be hilarious and I now kinda wanna write fanfiction for my stories if they ever get published.

Author's notes - thanks to the many people who have put this story on their alert list, and to the lovely few who have reviewed. I'm sorry this chapter's taken a while to finish, but I hope you enjoy its ridiculous length. As you can probably guess from the chapter title... a lot of time is taken up in this chapter. They seem to be getting longer and deeper as they go, from a few minutes to a short conversation to hours and hours of driving to... well. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

The house is dark as they drive into the yard. Arthur leaves his headlights on to guide them to the door, and they walk silently to the house.

"How much more of your degree did you have left?" Arthur asks as Ariadne fumbles with her keys.

Ariadne shrugs. "I would have been done in a few months, but it'll take me about a year to catch up and finish now."

That is, if I even go back, she thinks. She stands and waits awkwardly, the door open a few inches behind her. She holds the door handle behind her back in a death grip.

"You should finish," he says. Ariadne realises he's been thinking about this the entire drive back.

"That's not my life anymore."

"Nevertheless."

"I can't go back to just sitting in class and writing papers," she says. They've had this conversation. She said all of this as they hid from Fischer's subconscious and the rain as they waited for the sedation to end. And she thought he had agreed, although he had never voiced it.

Arthur stands there quietly. Ariadne wants to throttle him until he concedes and lets her quit. She wonders why she needs his permission. She realises that what she really wants is his blessing. She wonders why he won't just bloody speak.

"This is what I want to do now," she says.

Arthur shakes his head. "You've worked so hard, and your family has sacrificed so much to get you as far as you have. Why not just finish? If nothing else, it'll lessen the rift between you and your family that will be created by the work we do. Believe me, eventually you'll regret doing anything that causes you to lose them."

Ariadne thinks Arthur is starting to sound like Cobb, and she tells him as much. He laughs and ask if it worked.

"What worked?"

"Playing the sensible, family man. It always worked for him."

She sighs. She never got to know Cobb as 'sensible'. Only as lost and broken and desperate.

"Anyway," Arthur smiles and turns towards his car. "It wouldn't be 'just sitting in class'. I thought maybe we could do some work on the side; small jobs to get you some more practice. We threw you in the deep end before you could learn to swim, and a year is plenty of time to learn."

She grins. "I'll see you in Paris, then," she calls after him as he walks away, his jacket slung over a shoulder. Arthur throws up one hand in the air in a mock salute and she slips inside, not locking the door until she hears his car drive away.

* * *

Ariadne isn't quite surprised to see him waiting for her at the airport as she disembarks. As others around them hug children, shake hands with business associates and kiss loved ones, Arthur falls into step beside her without a word or a smile. A quick glance at his face reminds her that his eyes smile more than his mouth does. Arthur's eyes manage to shine even when the rest of his face is set in stone. A slight blush hits Ariadne's cheeks as she remembers the last time she saw his eyes smile like this.

He tries to take her luggage, but Ariadne insists that she is perfectly capable of carrying her one bag.

"You know, there are sometimes when being gentlemanly comes off a bit patronising," she teases.

He shrugs. "It was worth a shot."

And she blushes and his eyes smile and they leave the airport in silence.

* * *

She isn't overly impressed by the workspace he offers her. Nowhere near as large as the warehouse they had worked out of during the preparation for their previous job but nothing as comfortable and personal as the apartments he had shown her back home. She argues and wins and he offers her full creative license to do whatever she wishes to the stark studio apartment.

She grants him power of veto if he hates it and he laughs at the absurdity of the idea.

* * *

The first time Eames visits she giggles like a schoolgirl and runs into a hug that lifts her off the ground. Arthur grumbles something about losing valuable work time and she throws a pencil at him. Eames laughs at them, and does his best to waste as much of their time as he can. Ariadne misses the next day's classes, choosing to nurse her hangover instead.

A few days later while trying to clear out the ridiculous amount of waste paper they have accumulated, she finds a crumpled note underneath Arthur's desk that simply reads "Jealous, darling?" She pockets it.

* * *

Ariadne hates how long it takes her to learn Extraction. After months of training, she still only manages to retrieve tiny irrelevant pieces of information from Arthur's projections. He seems to marvel at her progress, though. Every time he reminds her that he's been training his subconscious against Extraction for years, she feels a little smaller and younger. She has started this too late, she can't catch up.

Eventually Ariadne starts to notice little things. It's not just in what the projections say when she chats with them. It's the way they move, the way they look at her. She doesn't tell Arthur that she's noticed that most of his projections try to flirt with her when she questions them. But it makes her feel better. She's uncovered a secret that maybe Arthur doesn't even know he has. She feels like she might be catching up.

* * *

She flies home to visit her family over Christmas. He follows her. She knows better than to ask him where his family is. They continue to work on details for their first real job together in his office building and she invites him to Christmas lunch.

Ariadne's sister tries to corner Arthur under a sprig of mistletoe she's been carrying around. After finding himself unable to avoid her any longer, he pecks the sixteen year old on the cheek and flees to the sound of Ariadne's laughter.

As she shows him out later that evening, she forgets about the mistletoe until she can hear her sister's giggling. At some point Cassandra had stuck her sprig to the door frame, hoping to catch her big sister with her mysterious 'friend'.

"Everyone's looking at us," Arthur says, glancing over her shoulder at Ariadne's family.

She tries to hide a smile. "Well then, quick. Give me a kiss."

His lips are soft and gentle and gone almost the moment she closes her eyes.

* * *

Before heading back to France, Arthur insists on visiting Cobb. Ariadne wonders if it is a coincidence that they happen to arrive on New Year's Eve, or that Cobb insists they stay the night. He throws them a miniature party which consists of a few too many drinks, a lot of jazz music, and two small children running around vying for attention.

Cobb is asleep on the couch, covered in sleeping children, well before midnight. Ariadne and Arthur stay up, drinking wine and dancing to Cobb's old records. Midnight strikes while they dance and they can hear neighbours counting down and cheering.

Philippa is awake and watching them. "You're supposed to kiss. It's midnight. It's the rules." She crosses her arms and pouts.

"It seems," Arthur points out to the blushing girl in his arms, "that the world is conspiring to get me to kiss you this week."

"I've noticed this," she replies. "But if it's the rules..."

She reaches up and presses her lips against his lightly, gently. This time it lasts a few moments longer than before, and he wraps his arms tighter around her. But a few moments don't last very long at all and eventually Arthur is the one to break it.

For a moment after he moves away, Ariadne forgets to breathe.

Neither of them notice Cobb is awake, and watching them through one half-open eye.

* * *

Arthur acts as Extractor when they finally go in a few weeks later. It's a simple dream with a single layer and they both go in, a young man Ariadne has never met but Arthur trusts watching over them as they dream. It is ridiculously easy, and all the training she's gone through over the past four months seems almost redundant. Arthur reminds her that her first job was Inception, and everything is always going to seem easy compared to that.

They don't celebrate their victory. The next day Ariadne spends the day in the library studying. Arthur takes her for coffee afterwards and they discuss their next opportunity.

* * *

"You two are a little creepy to watch, you know love," Eames says one night.

"How do you mean?" Ariadne frowns. While working with them on their latest job, Eames has spent the entire time causing as much trouble for Arthur as possible. She hopes he isn't planning on adding her to the people-Eames-must-tease-on-a-daily-basis list: a list she suspects of being quite long.

"You're like a mini-Arthur. An Arthur-Clone."

Ariadne doesn't think that's such a bad thing. "In what way?"

"When you're working, you hardly talk. Either of you. But each of you always seem to know what the other is doing. You're all... synchronised. It's quite sickening, darling."

"Jealous, darling?" She asks in a terrible British accent, smirking just a little.

She knows Arthur can hear them, but he doesn't seem to react to either their conversation or Eames' laughter.

* * *

Yusuf contacts them with a job offer. He calls it "risk-free" and "barely time consuming", but the pay he offers suggests otherwise. He has been working on a new sedative and needs test subjects he knows and trusts. Arthur worries on the plane that they are taking an unnecessary risk. Ariadne jumps at the opportunity.

"He said he needed strong dreamers that wouldn't get lost. Hey, if Yusuf thinks we can do it, I say we do it. It's his job. I'm sure he chose us for a reason."

"Nevertheless..."

She takes his hand and squeezes it. "We'll be fine."

Arthur almost backs out when Yusuf fills them in on the details. His new sedative is similar to the one they used during the Inception job, but designed for dreams with only one layer. Instead of the five minutes to one hour ratio, Yusuf's new sedative should in theory last for one day for the same length of time. Yusuf wants to try six hours of sedation but has been unable to find a willing volunteer. Ariadne has to hold Arthur in place to stop him from attacking Yusuf, who continues to insist on its safety.

"The dreams are quite stable. I've tested it on myself several times, but only for short periods. I am not a strong enough dreamer to do this alone. I need someone... more like you two. Eames suggested I-"

Arthur almost explodes. Ariadne wraps her arms around him, pressing her face against the back of his jacket until he stops swearing and yelling and starts breathing steadily again.

* * *

"I don't like that this was Eames' idea," Arthur says, his eyes dark and hard. His jaw is set in stone and Ariadne, sitting next to him on the dirty cot, leans her head on his shoulder hoping to calm him. She hears his heavy breaths slow.

"Arthur, we've been working together, dreaming together, basically living in each other's pockets, for the past six months. Add to that the amount of dream time we've shared, that's probably a few weeks at least. What's another few weeks?"

"Ariadne," he almost breathes her name rather than just saying it. "It'll be almost four months. Four months with no plan. Four months under deep sedation that, if something goes wrong, could end up with us stuck in Limbo for decades."

"And when we wake up, we can say we did it first," she says.

"Four months is a long time to dream."

Ariadne smiles as she remembers something Yusuf once told her. "Depends on the dream."

* * *

The first few days, they explore. Arthur sometimes has to stop Ariadne from experimenting too much.

The next few weeks, they work. Ariadne works on the concepts she is using in her final thesis. Arthur occasionally quizzes her on details of their next mark's life. She teaches him mazes. He teaches her to shoot.

After a month, Ariadne finds herself checking her totem almost constantly.

One morning, she sees Mal walking down the street.

A few days after that, she finds she no longer needs to remind herself she is still in a dream. Occasionally she catches Arthur fingering his die, but she doesn't seem to need the reminder anymore.

Two weeks later, she sees her projection of Arthur and Arthur's projection of her. They are sitting on a park bench holding hands, watching the world around them. She hides in the shadows and spies on them. Every now and again one looks to the other, but neither speak. After watching them for what feels like hours, Ariadne slips away.

A week after that, she tells Arthur what she saw. He admits he's seen them as well. When she asks if they were doing anything in particular, he refuses to answer, appearing somewhat more flustered than she's used to seeing him.

After they have been dreaming for two months, Ariadne starts to see just how much she can change before the projections around her start to notice. It takes her a few days, but she manages to perfect the perfect amount.

The next night, while walking with Arthur, she tests her new theory again. The lamp-posts around them start glowing a brilliant green and the few projections wandering the streets start to look around them angrily.

"What are you doing?" Arthur asks.

"Working on a theory," she says. "Could you distract them for a moment? I want to see how long this can last before they figure out what I did."

Arthur smiles. It's rare that she sees him truly smile. Usually his eyes twinkle, but tonight he grins. "Well, I do have one idea."

He kisses her.

As she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him closer, she remembers to switch the lamps to their normal colour. Just as she tries to deepen the kiss, Arthur flees.

The next few days are rather awkward. Ariadne learns that her suave confident Arthur, when it comes down to it, is terrible with girls. Eventually she corners him in an alley. To be perfectly honest, she builds the alley around him and blocks the exit.

"Why are you hiding from me?" She asks, hands on her hips and chin jutting out stubbornly.

"Define hiding." Arthur evades, leaning against the wall attempting to look as nonchalant as possible. He doesn't fool her at all.

"I wanted to talk. You keep disappearing."

Arthur's hand slips into his jacket pocket and returns with his totem. "You tricked me."

"With the projections and the kiss? Your idea, by the way. And you tricked me with that gimmick first, let me remind you." She leans against the bricks beside him and nudges his shoulder with her own. He smiles, but just slightly.

"Yes, I like kissing you," he admits. "But you're my partner."

"What exactly are you so worried about?"

He tosses his die in the air. "The only couple I've ever known personally in this business were Cobb and Mal."

Ariadne has no reply to this. Of course. What they are doing right now is exactly what sent Cobb and Mal into Limbo in the first place. She can't believe it hadn't even occurred to her until just now.

She takes his hand. "We're not them."

He still doesn't look at her. "And we can learn from their mistakes?"

"We already have," she assures him.

He wraps his arms tight around her almost possessively. Just as he is about to kiss her, the ground opens up underneath them and they fall into the deep crevasse.

* * *

They wake up with a start to find themselves on the floor. Yusuf crouches over them, his quiet assistant standing nearby.

"I'm so sorry, I had to wake you early." Yusuf offers a thousand apologies.

"You better have a damn good reason for giving us the kick, Yusuf," Ariadne grumbles much to the amusement of Arthur.

"Unfortunately I do. Men from Cobol Engineering have been asking questions about you two. I thought it best to get you out of Mombasa as quickly as possible."

Before Yusuf has finished speaking, Arthur is already up and pulling Ariadne out of the door with him. Yusuf calls after them to email him with any useful information they might have about the dream.

* * *

Returning to real life takes a few days to adjust. Attempting to coerce Arthur into any kind of relationship takes longer. His misgivings go much deeper than Cobb and Mal. On the plane, he warns her that their line of work will mean someone will always be their enemy. Ariadne stifles the urge to use a sarcastic retort, knowing that he is deadly serious about this.

"One day, no matter how careful we are, no matter how good we are, someone will be better than us. Someone will get hold of one of us, and they will be able to use our feelings for each other against us." Ariadne feels her cheeks redden when Arthur mentions feelings. They've been connected at the hip for so long, she feels connected to him in every way, but neither has even attempted to voice their feelings except for Arthur's mangled confession that he 'likes kissing her'. She spends most of the flight back clutching his hand tight, a reversal of their flight to Mombasa. Now it is Arthur that needs to comfort her. He doesn't let go of her.

* * *

Ariadne has two graduation parties, three if you count the one she shares with her Paris classmates.

After a loud and drunken night of celebrations with her fellow graduates, Ariadne helps pack up their office. She doesn't do much of the work but instead 'supervises' and nurses her massive hangover. Arthur is unfairly amused by her plight and teases her constantly, occasionally making up for it with a quick kiss as he carries boxes out of their 'offices'.

Her first real party is thrown by her parents a few nights after she returns to the States. She refuses to stay in her family home, instead moving into one of the empty apartments in Arthur's office building. "Temporarily," she claims and he laughs. The three hour commute irritates her parents but Arthur's charm wins them over.

Her parents invite a ridiculous number of people Ariadne hasn't spoken to in years, including her high school boyfriend who seems to have assumed his invitation meant a second chance. With Arthur barely five strides from her at any given time, Ariadne does not have to work hard to dissuade him of this.

A few weeks later, Cobb invites them for dinner and throws Ariadne a surprise graduation party. Eames and Yusuf attend, as does Professor Miles. James and Philippa are as always never far from their father. They celebrate their "little Architect becoming a grown-up Architect" as Eames puts it.

Ariadne isn't sure of their former team's knowledge one way or the other about her relationship with Arthur. She is careful to watch how she speaks with him, and tries to avoid touching him as much as she's used to. It feels odd and wrong and she tells him so in a whisper as they all sit together in the living room listening to Eames' latest tall tale.

"I've got an idea," he whispers back, smirking just a little. "Quick, give-" he begins to say before she kisses him, leaning close against him. She's all wrapped up in her Arthur and for a moment barely registers the catcalls coming from Eames and Yusuf. Philippa giggles and James complains about cooties.

Ariadne blushes. "They're all looking at us."

"Let them," he whispers into her hair.


End file.
